


Death Is A Miserable Business

by EnjolrasWould



Category: Death Is a Lonely Business - Ray Bradbury, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Early 20th century AU, Gen, I reserve the right to add more tags later as they become relevant, Murder Mystery, Whodunnit, the crossover no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnjolrasWould/pseuds/EnjolrasWould
Summary: The year is 1961 and Cosette Fauchelevent is on a mission to find her missing father, Jean Valjean. A series of mysterious deaths that may be linked to his disappearance lead her to team up with Inspector Javert, a detective who seems oddly determined to locate Valjean himself. Death itself is lurking around every corner, and if Cosette wants to avoid coming under suspicion herself, she's going to have to face a few of her own demons.--This is more or less a crossover between Les Miserables and Ray Bradbury's "Death Is A Lonely Business," with a few things changed and a few surprises along the way. If you've ever wanted to read a pseudo-noir tragicomedy where Cosette and Javert are buddy cops, well, here you go.





	1. Chapter 1: Meeting Death

**Author's Note:**

> And so begins the crossover no one asked for and which I wrote anyway!
> 
> I'm not sure how I can introduce this fic without spoiling everything, so instead I'll start by apologizing for what is guaranteed to be the weirdest, most obscure crossover this side of the fandom. I hope you'll have fun, and I'm sorry if I make you cry, (but only a little sorry.)
> 
> How I got from running Enjolraswould to writing this, I'm not sure. All I know is "Death" and "Les Mis" are two of my favorite stories and I could never unsee the parallels once I noticed them, so I guess you have to see them now too.
> 
> A quick note: Because this is going to be a long one, I'll include a brief chapter description at the top of each chapter so you can find your place if you lose it, or return to a chapter if you want to reread.
> 
> And a not so quick note: I'm including AU notes at the end of the chapters for your reference because holy crow, it's a doozy.
> 
> Thanks for coming along with me on this crazy adventure- I hope you stay on board for the ride!
> 
> Lovingly & with lots of furniture,
> 
> -EnjolrasWould

Chapter 1

-

Paris, France, in the early days of the fifth Republic, was something of an enigma. According to the newspapers, this was a new day for the nation, and the nation was stronger than ever. And indeed, the City of Lights hadn’t seemed quite so bright, nor so lively, since that brilliant time over 50 years past, when the world gathered in Paris to celebrate her beauty, her progress, and her indomitable spirit. So glittering was she now that barely a night passed where the stars could be clearly seen beyond her glow, so full of life was she now that the echoes of the past seemed to quiet in observance of a louder, more promising future.

Yet underneath the music that poured from nightclubs and theaters and apartments was still the steady, languid turning of the Seine. Late at night, with the laughter gone to bed, the last running metro cars rumbled beneath the city and rattled the walls and the ribcages inside the walls with their sleeplessness. And the echoes that were so silent in the day found their voices deep in the alleyways and empty parks of the predawn hours, singly softly only to those still wandering, asking how the streets could be so dark with so many lights.

It was one of these whispering nights, rocketing through the emptiness below even emptier streets in a metro thundering towards the emptiest place of all, home, that I met the Devil.

I had been late at the library and, lamenting the lost time, had begun working on assembling my next lead on the metro, my books and papers spread about me on the seat. No one else was aboard, just myself and my thoughts in the anemic light flickering above. So absorbed was I in my work that I didn’t notice the man who entered the car until he was already seated behind me.

I would not have noticed him except for his mumbling, and even at this I did not turn around to look at him. Anyone who rides the metro knows that to look at a stranger only encourages strangeness. I kept my eyes down on my papers, though I could feel his breath close behind me, crying messily and without rhythm. My attempts to ignore him, however, did little to discourage him.

“Oh,” he sobbed, and I felt his hands grab the back of my seat. Despite myself, I closed my eyes, so better to not hear him.

“Oh, God,” he moaned louder, and even my skin seemed to pull away from him as he leaned closer behind me, something brushing the back of my neck, the tip of my ear.

“Listen,” he cried, and it was a plea issued from the very bottom of a grave.

The metro swung around a turn, sending my books sliding as the lights above shuddered, dimmed, and threatened to burn out entirely. I heard my papers scatter but could not move to gather them, could only hunch blindly forward as the wine-soaked voice behind me gasped, “Death!”

Another turn sent my books thudding to the floor. The rails below screeched but did little to cover the stranger’s voice so close beside my ear, as I heard him again cry, “Death!”

And suddenly all noise, all movement, ceased. The metro had arrived at its next station. For a moment the air hung completely still as the vibrations of the train petered out into idleness. And then he whispered:

“Death… is a miserable business.”

He whispered it so sadly that his very words dripped with sorrow. To my horror, I felt something wet splash against my neck and swim down underneath my shirt collar. Tears? Perhaps. I could not make myself turn to face him. I stayed curled into myself, waiting, praying.

I heard him stand, then, and lean closer. So dearly did he want to be heard, so urgent was his message. And so frightened was I that when his voice abruptly rang in my other ear, I almost began to sob myself.

“Death!” he shouted, and at my responding yelp, he lowered his voice once more to a murmur, “Is a miserable business.”

And trembling, I listened to his footsteps fade as he shuffled from the metro, heading out into the sparkling night somewhere above.

Only when the train began to move again was I able to jerk upright, to rush to the window in order to try and catch a glimpse of the stranger. But it was too late; we had already entered the next tunnel. Whether my tormentor was flesh and blood or a ghost conjured by my own fears, there was no way to tell. I was already journeying into the emptiness again, this time most assuredly alone.

And alone was, at that moment, something I did not want to be.

“You shouldn’t,” I told myself as I gathered my fallen books, “You don’t need a drink. You promised Papa you wouldn’t drink.” But…


	2. Chapter 2: The Police Boat

Chapter 2

-

I had a drink anyway.

I knew of a little run-down, wood paneled, pre-war pub a few blocks out of my way, midway between home and the Seine, and this is where I headed, if only because even if it was empty except for the bartender, at least it would be more populated than home. Which it was, empty except for the bartender, distracted by his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

“One double vodka, please.”

The request shocked me, though I was the one who had said it. I didn’t even particularly want a double vodka. What I really wanted to do was call Marius, half a world but really only a thousand kilometers away in Venice. I wanted to call him and say that I was alright. But I definitely wasn’t alright, because I was ordering a double vodka. And why? Nothing happened.

Nothing happened except… the world’s emptiest train and a stranger’s desperate sad voice dripping tears down the back of my shirt, and both were likely to creep into my bed with me that night.

Not that this was terribly unusual. Most nights now I was accompanied in the loneliest possible way, by thoughts of Marius away and Papa gone and everyone so scattered and far…

So I drank the double vodka.

“Jesus, lady,” the bartender cursed, reaching for the glass I’d slammed back onto the table just a little too loudly, “Take it easy. You don’t need it that bad.”

“I don’t need it at all,” I coughed, wincing through the burn, “At least now I know I don’t like vodka.”

“You’ve never had vodka?”

“I’ve never had anything more than wine.”

The bartender whistled lowly, cleaning the glass carefully and shelving it again. “Well, I’m honored, but what’s the occasion?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied, leaning against the bar, “But I feel terrible. I think something bad is going to happen but I don’t know what or to who.”

“We all feel like that, these days,” the bartender shrugged, then paused to glance at me through the corner of his eye, like he was seeing me for the first time, “Wait, aren’t you the young lady whose father went missing a few months ago?”

It was a common enough question. Ever since Papa had vanished, and ever since Marius and I had begun our search, most of Paris knew me as the girl with the missing father. But I shook my head noncommittally. I couldn’t write every strange feeling off as being part of Papa’s disappearance.

“This isn’t about my father being missing. There’s something bad coming, getting closer all the time. Something is going to happen.”

The bartender looked nervously from me to the door, then absently began wiping down the bar.

“Probably the weather, then. Big storm coming tonight. You ought to go home and stay away from double vodka,” he advised. Neither of us looked at each other as I dropped my money on the bar and gathered my books once again, and I left the bar feeling somehow worse that I had when I went in.

Sometime the winter before, an old police boat had been dumped in the Seine. No one would admit to who had done it; the police insisted they weren’t responsible, but who else could it have been? In any case, the wreck still floundered there, rocking in the sluggish flow of the river. The newspapers had done a merciless job of mocking it, a few small-time politicians had referenced it in their speeches for one reason or another, and then the weather had grown warmer and more important issues had captured the city’s imaginations, and ultimately nothing was done to remove the old boat from its final resting place. Sometimes a few brave children would wade out to it and play on its tilted deck and duck underneath to peer from the submerged portholes, but otherwise the wreck had become just another part of the landscape.

What possessed me to wander towards the Seine that night instead of straight home, I cannot say. One would assume that after the encounter on the train and the unpleasant drink, I would be eager to return to someplace familiar. Yet my footsteps turned me towards the river, and I found myself leaning against the wall above the water and gazing down towards that once controversial boat.

Now, long after midnight with the lights of the city glowing all around, the water took on a curious sort of life, all faintly shimmering waves and shivers. In comparison, the wreck itself was dark and still, a foreign body lodged unwelcomingly in the serene forward motion of the river. Yet not entirely still; it rocked softly in that motion, steadily, as though breathing in its sleep.

Despite myself, I stayed a moment, watching the shipwreck breathe. Underneath the silver shine of full moonlight and dusty golden glitter of more human lights around me, the water was still somehow black as anything, blacker even than the shadow of the police boat. The night rather abruptly felt whole, and wholly focused on this river and the boat within the river.

Perhaps a different vessel further along the river moved, or perhaps it was the wind. But as I moved to turn away and head back into the night, the water suddenly swelled darkly around the wreck. It rocked, roughly, once before settling back into its tired old motion, but something was changed.

My heart pounded once, twice. I leaned over the wall once again, straining to see into the dark. Something was behind one of the portholes, half-submerged; a motion, or a paleness that wasn’t there before. A reflection, I thought, or something like a ghost.

A face. A face, just behind the window, too shadowed to recognize. Disbelieving, I leaned further over the wall, half praying that the river would again surge against the boat, push the shape… closer? To be seen? Or further in, away from sight, so that I may not see?

But as the boat rocked, the shape fell forward. The face pressed itself against the glass, a familiar photograph in negative, empty-eyed and emotionless as a marble bust tossed carelessly into water to be weathered, smoothed, erased…

And it sank once again.

Somehow, my first and only thought was of the stranger on the metro, his words leaping and echoing like stones skipped across the surface of the Seine, dropping finally with great reaching ripples: “Death… is a miserable business.”

It couldn’t be.

But there it- he- was. A dead man, tapping at the window of the police boat.

Worst of all, I knew who he was.

This I contemplated, rather coldly, to myself as more and more lights around me turned on and people began to come running. I had woken them with my screaming.


	3. Chapter 3: Poor Old Fellow

Chapter 3

-

The police were there quickly, almost quicker than the civilians that came jogging from nearby apartments with their robes half-tied and blankets still wrapped around their shoulders. In moments I was no longer alone with my terror, instead surrounded by a dozen questioning bodies and a few dozen more curious faces, hung in windows above like cherub-faced Christmas ornaments. It was one of these sudden companions that had called the police, and the police had come with cars and a small rowboat to go and fetch what I had found.

One of the officers tried to take my shoulder, tried to lead me to a safe back seat where they could wrap a blanket around my shaking and ask me a few questions, but I refused. I wanted to stay at the wall and see them pull the man from the police boat, had to stay and make sure that drowned face really was who I believed it was.

“C’mon, go back inside, nothing to see,” the officer was calling into the crowd, but I didn’t hear any windows close or footsteps shuffle any further back than the street.

How could I explain to the police about the man on the metro, who told me without telling me about the man in the boat? A sob climbed up my throat as I realized, oh God, someone had to have put him in that boat.

But how could I know for sure? What would I give the police for evidence? The tears on my shirt? The chill in my spine? Just those words, about death and its misery?

The police down below on the bank of the Seine had drawn straws for who would row out to the wreck, and two men complained as they heaved into the little craft they had brought along. They scattered the lights on the surface of the water as they rowed, reaching the police boat in a few efficient strokes, pulling up alongside the porthole where a mournful, long-forgotten prisoner tapped pleadingly against the glass. When one officer lifted a hammer to break that glass, it was suddenly more than I could bear. I pulled away from the wall and fell to the curb, allowing the grief at last to come choking up out of my chest.

Somewhere behind me was the sound of breaking glass, followed by the sound of the shards splashing into the water as the police emptied the porthole of remnants. Then the groans of men moving something heavy, immensely heavy. Then the sound of oars against water.

The officer beside me took my shoulder again, this time in a silent request to please, stand up, come tell us if the man is who you think he is. I allowed him to gather me off the sidewalk, to tuck me safely under an arm, and lead me steadily towards the stairs that would bring us down to the riverbank.

From the stairs, I watched the officers lift the cold shape out of their rowboat and lay him, tenderly, on a tarp on the riverbank. They bent over him, flashlights brushing over their faces as they discussed.

“Adult male, gone about 24 hours I’d say.”

“Any wallet or ID in his pockets?”

“We’ll get someone to check. The witness thinks she can ID him.”

“That’s the girl lost her father a few months back, yeah?”

“Jesus, you think it’s him?!”

By now I had reached their sides. All of them stood up to shine their flashlight my way save for an older officer, a detective with a fierce, ugly sort of sneer, who was methodically  
searching every pocket on the body, even feeling alongside the lining of its coat.

A flashlight hit my eyes, causing me to look up with a painful blink. Another, younger officer was searching my face.

“Mademoiselle, I’m sorry to ask you this, but the neighbors above say they heard you screaming that you knew this man. Is that true? Do you recognize him?”

I glanced away from him, back towards the body. The sneering detective had pulled a wallet from a pocket and was rifling through it distractedly. I pulled away from the circle of questioning lights and approached the body slowly, slowly, and dropped to my knees beside him.

And it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Papa.

Still, I began to cry again. The face was so similar; they could have been brothers, twin brothers. I cried because this stranger wasn’t Papa, thank goodness, and I cried because he was so much like Papa, and still dead no matter who he was.

My weeping shocked the detective out of his reverie, and he snapped upright to look at me. If I hadn’t already been so wretchedly sad, I might have been frightened by his shadowed eyes, by the old-fashioned way he wore his sideburns, by his frightening smile. But it was a smile I recognized on his face, and in a horrible mixture of relief and pain I reached out and grabbed hold of his sleeve.

He nearly leapt out of his skin at my touch, but quickly came forward again and took my hand, all dark eyes and bared teeth.

“Do you know this man?” he growled softly.

“I thought I did,” I gasped, “But no.”

“Then why do you cry?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

“Because I thought-,” I replied, and the distant screech of the metro rang through my mind. I almost finished, “He was murdered,” but couldn’t. 

“-thought I knew him,” I finished lamely.

He stared at me a moment longer, his expression unreadable. Then the flashlights waved over his face, and abruptly the beast I had been speaking to was turned back into just a particularly strange old detective, just an old man who helped me stand carefully and led me back to the circle of officers.

“What does the wallet say?” one of them asked, plastic bag opened outwards for the detective. He took one last look at something inside the fold, then dropped it into the evidence bag.

“ID says Ultime Fauchelevent, the, ah, gentleman who went missing a few months ago,” he coughed, “You’ll recognize the young lady here as his daughter.”

The detective’s use of Papa’s full name stunned me. What was his ID doing in this stranger’s pocket?

“So it is him, then? She recognized him?” someone asked.

“No,” I blurted out, glancing from face to face around me, “No, it’s not Papa. That can’t be his wallet. There has to be something wrong.”

Another officer came trotting over from the body to join us, “It definitely looks like the fellow from the newspapers. I was afraid something like this had happened.”

“Poor old fellow,” the first officer agreed, then bent to look me in the eye, “Look, mademoiselle, sometimes the water can make a face look different, after a day or so. Are you sure that isn’t your father?”

His tone was exceedingly gentle. Suddenly, I was insulted. I turned pleadingly to the detective, but he was not looking toward me. He was looking back, towards the body, beyond that, to the Pont Au Change, and did not see me look to him.

“The papers give a positive ID,” the condescending officer was muttering to an underling, taking notes, “But alright, give her a day to calm down. Let’s case the scene. We have her contact information? We’ll call on her tomorrow…”

I didn’t wait for them to dismiss me. I simply started walking, quickly, up to the street, my head spinning. So the man wasn’t Papa. But he was dead, and somehow, I knew who had done it to him. And in that moment I was sickened by the thought of trying to speak even one more word to the police, because they believed the dead man was Papa.

I didn’t even realize I had begun running until, a block from my apartment, a police car pulled up alongside me and caught my attention. I slowed as the passenger side window rolled down, revealing the strange detective from before.

“Take it easy,” he called out, the careful words sounding ill at ease in his gruff tone. But I slowed down all the same, catching my breath against a street sign.

“Everyone has been telling me that tonight.”

“Get in. I want to speak to you.”

“My apartment’s only-“

“I said, get in!!”

I didn’t much like to be barked at but I was tired, and out of breath, and in the brief pause the trembling that had shaken me by the river had come back full force. I climbed in and allowed him to drive me the last block to the apartment I used to share with Papa. Exiting, I could barely keep my feet under me.

“My name is Javert,” the detective said through the window to me as I turned to thank him, “Inspector Javert. And I know that man isn’t your father.”

A shudder passed over me, and for a long and quiet moment, the detective and I did nothing but stare at one another. I guess I was waiting for an explanation of how he knew the drowned man wasn’t Papa, but I didn’t get one just then, because when Javert spoke it was only to say, “Now get along home and don’t pay it any mind. That man in the river isn’t anybody, just-“

“He was somebody,” I interrupted, and Javert seemed startled by the outburst. He narrowed his eyes at me, the same searching look he’d given me down by the river. Eerily, I felt as though it was because he recognized me.

“He was somebody,” I insisted again, then gathered my courage to finally finish it, “And he was murdered. And I think I know who did it. And… and I’ll come and find you when I figure it out.”

The full terror of what I had said seemed just then to unfold. A man had been murdered. I knew the murderer. What other horrors would the night unleash on me from here on out?

Javert said nothing, just let out a bitter sounding noise that I suppose might have been a laugh, then gunned the engine into a roar. I leapt out of the way as the car sped away from the curb, retreating down the street until the taillights were just another set of flashes in the city full of lights.

When I reached the landing before my apartment door, I paused a moment by the payphone in the hallway. My hand crept to the change in my pocket, thinking, Marius. I’ll call him in Venice, wake him up, tell him about the dead man that looks like Papa, and…

And scare him to death, and do nothing to help anyone. I knew what I really had to do was listen to the detective.

“Get along home,” and with a grotesque not-laugh.


	4. Chapter 4: Ouija

Chapter 4

~

The apartment still didn't feel like home. Whether that was because Papa was gone or because even before he left our move here had been sudden and tumultuous, I couldn't tell.

It was modest, which had amazed Marius the first time he saw it. The door opened into the living room: pale blue pre-war wallpaper, heavy curtains pinned back with serious-looking brass pegs, heavy bookcase looming in the corner over a few brocade armchairs Papa had bought because I insisted we have a place to read together each night. The one out of place element in the room was the mantle: ornately carved white marble, probably the oldest remaining part of the building, upon which stood a pair of silver candlesticks, which Papa once said were an old family heirloom.

The fireplace itself had been boarded up to keep a draft out, and it was against these board I had tacked all the records of my search. In a folder taped to one side were copies of newspaper articles: "Local Philanthropist Missing; Reward For Tips" and "Daughter of Missing Man Still Determined" and "Recent Developments in Mysterious Disappearance." In the beginning, plenty of newspapers had been eager to help drum up publicity for the case. But with no new developments in a month, the articles had stopped reporting. Papa's disappearance was moved from front page to second, then to the columns, where he was mentioned in single lines alongside recent arrests and fundraising announcements.

The rest of the board was cluttered with scraps of paper: addresses, phone numbers, lists of people to speak to, much of it crossed out with red pen. Throwing my bag down by the door and collapsing to sit in front of the fireplace, I was reminded again of a wry comment I had made to Marius about needing a roll of twine to string between the parts to properly play the roll of paranoid conspirator. He hadn't gotten the joke.

I shivered, still shaken by the scene down at the river, and huddled closer to the board as though it would warm me like the fireplace underneath. How often had I done this, late into the night, trying to puzzle the pieces together? At first it had seemed easy: the whole city was in on the search and information seemed to pour in and assemble itself into tidy little paths, but now nothing came, or if it did it was wrong or misinformation. I could feel the warmth slowly leaking out from the case as it fell cold.

I think my discouragement had a lot to do with Marius being so far away in Venice, leaving me feeling lost and cold, with all the sun gathered there to beam down on the sparkling canals, with nothing left in Paris except fog and rain and murdered men in rivers. He had been my constant companion since Papa grew so distant, and he had been indispensable throughout the search. It was me who told him to go to Venice, lest he lose the internship he had worked so desperately for, even though in his absence loneliness became my most frequent bedfellow.

He called, when he could, the payphone in the hall, which I listened to constantly, hoping each ring was either Marius or a break in Papa's case, and which was hardly ever either.

My hands groped for a sheet of paper and a pen. I wondered whose hands they were, so pale and trembling, like I had been the one fished out of the river instead of the man who looked like Papa. I hadn't sketched portraits in years, had given it up back at the convent, but now my memory of the hour before seemed to huge for words. I watched my hands scribble, watched the drawing emerge.

I first I thought I would draw the man on the boat, but something else began to take shape. It started somewhere in my ribs, rocking like the police boat in the tide, a rocking that quickened until it became the speeding sway of the metro. I felt, again, the swimming of a stranger's tears down my neck and choked, about to be sick. 

But I didn't throw up. I forced my hands to stop and gazed, in awe, at the half-finished sketch on the page before me:

A shadowy figure hunched in a seat on the metro, his face obscured but the lines of the scribbling coming together to shape something somehow menacing, yet sorrowful. And in heavy print above his head: DEATH and IS A followed by MISERABLE and finally, BUSINESS.

With a grimace, I pinned the picture to the center of the board, then whipped out a new sheet of paper and didn't stop writing until I had covered all the details I could remember about the man on the metro and Papa's poor unnamed twin, all washed in black water in the womb of the abandoned boat.

The shaking finally stopped.


	5. AU Notes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to move a lot of elements around for this AU, so here's some notes if you're into that kind of thing.

"Death Is A Miserable Business" AU Notes and Semi-Prequel, (aka "Les Mis" if it happened in the early-mid 20th century and before the story you're currently reading, aka The Set-Up.)

-Valjean goes to jail in 1910, gets out in 1929. Is able to disappear in the Depression.

-Fantine leaves Cosette with Thenardier in 1941, Cosette is rescued in 1946. Fantine lives but no one knows.

-Valjean and Cosette still go to the convent to avoid Javert and gang up with Fauchelevent who at some point retires.

-Marius is born in 1935, everything is more or less the same here except Gillenormand has Nazi sympathies.

-He leaves home in 1952 to find his dad who survived the war but died just before Marius meets him.

-Marius lives in an awful tenement over the Musain and meets some Amis, Eponine, and Fantine, who are living there for one reason or another.

-Marius and Cosette meet in 1956.

-Les Amis were members of the French Resistance and made it out mostly alive but damaged by the war. Not everyone made it out, however. Tragedy and trauma distances Les Amis from each other postwar.

-Marius gets to know them somewhat throughout 50s. At some point he lives with Courfeyrac as well.

-Everything surrounding the barricade more or less happens around 1958, (Valjean trying to leave with Cosette, Marius angst-joining the riot, Valjean saving Marius), but there aren't any major character deaths and everyone makes it out, (though not necessarily without injury.) Les Amis come mostly back together during this time and then go into hiding to avoid arrest.

-Also Javert doesn't commit suicide for reasons that will come into play later.

-After Marius recovers from his injuries it's revealed, surprise! Fantine is alive and she's over here, in the tenement. She and Cosette are reunited and begin mending their relationship and Cosette gets to know a few of Marius's weird friends.

-Valjean ends up distancing himself and leaving because Cosette has her "real" parent now. He moves out of their apartment in 1960 and won't tell Cosette where he is living.

-Now it's 1961! Valjean has been missing for about a month, Marius is abroad in Venice, Cosette is searching for Valjean, and Death is stalking the streets of Paris.


End file.
